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Translator of Demian by Hermann Hesse into English - an interlinear translation for German students and those who want to see the original text.
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Fluent in Japanese, Korean. Proficient in Mandarin, Turkish, German, French, Portuguese, others.

Wednesday, July 14, 2010

I noticed in a few of the articles on Rosetta's flyby of the 21 Lutetia asteroid that some were not sure whether this asteroid was the type where one misstep could send you careening into space, or whether it had sufficient gravity to hold people to the surface. The answer is of course that with a diameter of 100 km it has more than enough gravity to hold people to the surface, and indeed it would be impossible to escape without a velocity of some 300 kph. But while calculating the surface gravity and escape velocity of a body isn't very complicated it still isn't one that can be done in one's head in the same way area, circumference and all the rest can, so I thought it would be helpful to come up with a quick chart of the surface gravity, escape velocity and surface area of asteroids at different diameters.

The calculation assumes a sphere, and while smaller asteroids are almost never perfectly spherical it's the only way to make a rough calculation. It also assumes an average density of 4 grams per cm3, and so keep in mind that this can vary a bit as well. I have also added equivalent regions or countries to the surface area in order to give a good idea of how much there is to explore.

You can see that it doesn't take much to have an asteroid where the escape velocity is greater than any slight misstep, and a diameter of 5 km is sufficient here, while by the time you get to a diameter of 15 km those on the surface are very secure. The asteroid 243 Ida has an escape velocity that varies depending on how far away you are from the centre, but even at the furthest tip it's still 52 kph and this can reach as high as 100 kph closer to the centre, so that asteroid is safe for human explorers as well.

Back to the chart: it goes up to 300 km and then straight to 4 Vesta (the most massive asteroid but not the largest; 2 Pallas is slightly larger), as once you reach 200 - 300 km it's easier to just look directly at the information for each asteroid as there aren't many left. Ceres, of course, is larger still though it is no longer considered to be just an asteroid.